ALL VICTIMS' MOTHERS DEAD AND NO ONE MADE THE CONNECTION UNTIL THE MAIDEN NAMES?

So, did anyone else wonder why when they interviewed all the rape victims, no one caught on to the fact that all their mothers had been killed in the last 2 years? didn't the women talk to each other? this doesnt make sense. what a gap in the plot line, guys!

Gringos, go home!

I\\\'m from Argentina. That is, I speak Spanish. This means I pay special attention when the characters of an american series speak Spanish or has something to do with Latinoamerica.
And this episode sucked in that area.

For starters, the name of the town (Allende del Sol) is absurd: \\\"Beyond the sun\\\". I accept that towns might not have the most logical names but this is ridiculous.

In the very first minutes there\\\'s a big big goof that ruined all my credibility in the episode: When Elle is handed the newspaper, the headlines are in a lousy spanish and said something different of what she translates.
The headlines read:
\\\"Una asesina serial mayor de edad aterroriza a los pueblos locales. El procurador general y las autoridades mueven lentamente\\\" which means \\\"A 18+ female serial killer terrorizes local towns. The general attorney and the authorities move slowly\\\". The correct headline should have been:
\\\"Un asesino serial de mujeres mayores siembra el terror en los pueblos vecinos. La procuradora general y las autoridades policiales se mueven lentamente.\\\"

And then we had to buy that in a rural town from Mexico all the inhabitants are fluent in English (and quite fluent!) while all but one of the agents (including the boy genius Dr Reid) can\\\'t speak more than a few common words. Please!
I understand that people in the US can\\\'t read subtitles and that making all the episode spoken in Spanish and Elle translating would have been boring, but... but Don\\\'t make an episode in Mexico if you don\\\'t want Spanish be the language spoken by Mexicans!

Language considerations aside, the episode is in the verge of involuntary racism. I know that wasn\\\'t the intention of the people in the show to show cultural superiority from the americans over the mexicans and most of the times they show a greater knowledge and respect for latino cultures than other american shows, but at times I felt that the mexican character were shown as \\\"ignorant beaners\\\", if you know what I mean.

And the story was very poor, the discovery of the serial killer was an obscene Deus ex machina and, please!, a serial killer in drags that lives with the corpse of his mother? Haven\\\'t I seen this before? Mmmmm... yup... I think his name was Mormon Boots... I mean, Normal Baits... I mean, Norman Bates...

Is a shame that a well produced show like Criminal Minds issued a lousy episode like Machismo.

Review

Every time this show takes a case into Mexico I feel like Im watching the same episode over and over again. The writers continue to make reference to how in Mexico things often relate to family or some weird Mexican tradition that we cannot relate to. Once again (for the second episode in a row) the profile was incorrect for most of the episode. I didnt mind how it was wrong in "Everyones Watching" but that was because I was more into the plot. This storyline just seems recycled. If they plan to go out of the country - stop picking the same old desert scenes of Mexico and using the Mexican tradition as the baseline of the episode. I dont think I was going to like any episode that followed the blockbuster of the one before this one, but this episode was one of the worst of the first season.

How to spend weekend..

Oh - I cannot say it was not good storyline - the story has its message and very strong way of telling it but it was a message inside a cultural limits and maybe it makes sense when seeing it in America, but here in Europe it just felt like a distance as we do not have that problem. Ok.. the episode - scenery change. And the story before the case about Hotchner - that will get interesting, I am sure.

The case itself had some turns but again, I think they have had episode what concentrated more on the profile than this.. That seemed to be another char story, like last one, this time giving Greenaway a change to shine.

I found this one pretty dull with a predictable plot and an even more predictable unsub as the team travels to Mexico to help in the hunt for a serial killer who targets elderly women.

The twelfth rape and murder in two years of an elderly woman in Mexico sends the BAU to look at the case. The local police captain, however, who is already known to Gideon, warns that the usual profiling methods are unlikely to work in a place like this. The BAU's job is made more difficult when they receive little or no co-operation from locals and they find out that their chief suspect, the son of the latest victim, is a homosexual, but very firmly in the closet as such an admission would mean more than a little trouble for such a man if he were to be placed in a local prison.

A further hinderance is that the women of the town are unwilling to talk but the team are sure that they know more than they are letting on. With the help of Elle, who speaks Spanish fluently, they are able to extract a little more information and continue with their theory of a serial killer in spite of those in local authority insisting that it is nothing of the sort. Finally, the necessary breakthrough is made and the case is solved but at a cost to Hotch who is having trouble at home with a disgruntled Haley who is angered at the amount of time he spoends away from her and their young son, Jack.

No doubt a lot of fans really liked this one, but I'm afraid that I can't say I was one of them.

I'm still not sure I know why they were in Mexico. Did the captain guy ask them to come?

Other than not knowing why they were there to begin with it was a very good episode.
I loved Elle's part in it, they were able to show some of her skills and give her a little backstory without compleatly centering the episode on her. I think what was unsaid might be even more important than what was said, she obviously had a powerful conection with the girls as she talked with them.
I was a little disspointed in the small amount of screentime that Morgan was given, especially with Garcia, those two go so great together.
I loved the endding with the girls all coming out of the bushes with sticks having beat him to death. He got what he deserved. I was a little surprised that they weren't charged at all. in the states they would be charged with manslaughter.
Overall a really good episode.

Good show indeed

Love the show as the team heads to Mexico with
An elderly woman that was recently murdered and all fingers
Point towards the son who is also homosexual as the team
Finds out that he had an arguement with his uncle and
Discover all kinds of skeletons on the closet. Loved it when
Elle tried to speak spanish but isn't latino despite her name.

Great episode, but got to feel bad for Hotch. He had his weekend ruined.

This was an excellent episode. It was nice to see the team in another country, and the way they and their assistance were welcomed by someone who was willing to play politics to keep the women he protected safe.

You had to feel bad for Hotch because he had wanted to take the weekend of his birthday to spend with his wife and child. I think that might have been his sister going by the way they interacted. (I know there has never been any mention of Hotch having sister before, but we didn't know until Episode 17 "The Tribe" that Hotch had a brother.) But she also could have been his sister-in-law. When he got the call from Gideon, you could tell that he did not want to leave his family even though he had to.

As far as the case goes it helped give Elle more focus in this episode, we find out that she is fluent in Spanish because her mother is Cuban. This helps to give her more of a connection with the Mexican community because she undeerstand their language and can communicate with them. Communication is the key to trust and cooperation in anythign, but especially in a case like this.

It was a nice move having the first woman they get to open up to get the other women who had been attacked by the killer come forward with their stories to help catch the killer. It was from this that they realized that the killer was going after the mothers and grandmothers of his original victims. The fact that it was a man dressing as a woman to get their trust and gain entry to the homes was a little weird, but gave a good plot line.

All in all, this was a really good episode, and I hope the writers keep up the good work.

Good overall episode

This epidsode had a good plot and storyline, i liked the way it built up to a different conclusion, like every episode does that.
I liked the language barrier in the show which called for some improvisations and subtitles, which was also helped by one of the team speaking spanish!
I liked the ending and the way the woman who were victims actually solved the crimes.
Es muy bien!

The BAU, and the CM writers, concentrate attention on the victims. Just as they should.

The title of the episode is somewhat misleading. Literally, “A strong or exaggerated sense of masculinity stressing attributes such as physical courage, virility, domination of women, and aggressiveness.” The exaggerated feelings of domination over women did not lead Pablo Vargas to rape and kill – as Captain Navarro himself said, Vargas lacked machismo of any kind. He lived his life dominated by women – his boss, and probably his mother before her death. He could not respond as other Latin men do – with aggressiveness and courage right out there in the open, he could only take out his anger on helpless women in the dark desert night where he was still concerned about “how he did.” It was his lack of machismo, and how people may have perceived him because of that lack, that informed his actions, not the cultural expectations.

What a powerful story. I appreciated the showcase for the rape victims – we didn’t have to go to Mexico to find members of law enforcement, and of the community itself, who ignore these women. Milagros was a wonderful spokeswoman for the victims – faceless, nameless women who hover in the shadows, afraid to speak about what has been done to them. She brings them, and their stories, into the light at the police station, and having Elle and JJ as the BAU members most responsible for their emergence was profoundly satisfying.

And it was an empowering story. A woman holds the power as the District Attorney General, even if she is somewhat stereotyped as the “woman boss” who all the men make fun of behind her back. The woman factory-owner who did not tolerate any victimization of the women in her employ was a great character. And the ultimate punishment was doled out to the rapist and killer. While I’m not condoning vigilante-ism, the reaction of the not-helpless-anymore women confronting their attacker was the perfect “let the punishment fit the crime” moment. While this episode was nominally about catching the serial killer, it felt more like an acknowledgement of women – and how many cultures, including our own, are not ready to see that women are as valuable as men.

Even Hotch’s minimal sub-plot spoke to this theme. He is going to have to address his absence from his family, and the huge burden this puts upon Haley. We can expect the stress between his dedication to his job - his BAU family - and his actual family will haunt him. As the Mexican proverb states: “The house does not rest upon the ground, but upon a woman.”

BAU goes south of the border!

Th best part of this episode was the fact that they ventured outsider the United States. This made it different to anything that the show hsa done so far in the first season, and as a result, it stands out.

The case wasn't particularly sublime, but the episdde was bolstered by the fact tht so many of the crimes had gone unreported in Mexico, which made the case more difficult for the BAU to solve.

I didn't enjoy this episode as much as the previous one. This was still a very impressive episode, and I would definitely recommend it very highly, but it wasn't the best one from the season! Still, keep this up Criminal Minds, because we are continuing to see amazing episodes!

Gideon and team head to Mexico to investigate a murder which might have a connection with other killings in the area.

Decent episode a couple of nice twists. Gideon and team head south of the border to solve a series of murders in Mexico. They meet a less than cooperative cop named Captain Navaro and self grandiose
politician who could care less about the victims.

Lupe Trejo an elderly woman is found murdered. The fingers point at her son, Miguel wh has been in arguments with her and the uncle. Gideon and the team are unable to find any actual evidence.
Investigating the family history they learn that Miguel is gay and probably did not kill his mother. However a couple of suspicious circumstances shows that these case isn’t your standard serial killer job.

This episode had a couple of interesting twists and turns, I thought everything was done well including the ending. It’s not often that the series does transvestite like killers but it did so and did it well.

Overall I liked it, and it was a good way to show Elle’s handy work to the team being Latino and all.

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